Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence Editor and a world-renowned expert on global security and terrorism issues. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books. His new book, Churchill's First War: Young Winston and the fight against the Taliban, is published by Macmillan in London and Thomas Dunne Books in New York. He appears regularly on radio and television in Britain and America.

Russia's plan to disarm Syria is a massive red herring

You can tell by the way the Obama administration is falling over itself to accept Moscow's plan to neutralise Syria's chemical weapons stockpile that it is doomed to failure.

Having set his arbitrary red lines for military intervention in Syria's civil war – namely the use of banned weapons by the Assad regime – the American president now finds himself in a desperate scramble to avoid following through on his commitment. As a result, no one at the White House is prepared to give Moscow's offer the sober assessment it deserves and expose it as an utterly futile gesture.

The first problem the Russians have conveniently overlooked is that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and his cronies in Damascus refuse even to acknowledge that the regime possesses chemical weapons, even though it is generally accepted by most Western intelligence agencies that Syria has between 500-1,000 tons of illicit stockpiles which were originally acquired to defend the regime from attack by Israel.

The second obvious oversight is how, precisely, the Russians can expect teams of international weapons inspectors to scour the country for weapons of mass destruction in the midst of a brutal civil war. Only last month attempts by a team of UN weapons inspectors to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus was shot at by unidentified snipers.

The Russians have no interest in examining these issues for the simple reason that they know full well that the chances of an effective inspections/disarmament regime taking place in Syria is complete moonshine. Moscow is simply playing – and winning – a very clever game of chess with the Americans, knowing full well that Mr Obama will grab any excuse he can find to avoid military action against Damascus. The Russians have obliged by presenting him with the perfect excuse, thereby saving their trusted ally from attack.

We have been here before, of course, when the Western powers spent the better part of the 1990s trying to verify that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had got rid of all his weapons of mass destruction. But after more than a decade of diplomatic brinkmanship, which on occasion degenerated into military action, such as the cruise missile attacks in 1998 after Saddam expelled a team of UN inspectors, we were still none the wiser about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Thus, having resisted taking decisve military action for more than a decade, the West was finally forced to act in 2003.

On this basis, if Moscow has its way, the US will not give serious consideration to military action against Damascus until well into the next decade. Which suits Russia and its psychotic allies in Damascus just fine.